I accept
only
wish
to change what cannot be
changed
delusions of
ecstatic
union
fade
smothered
under
silence
disinterest
triviality
joylessness
wouldn’t be minded
if the brief
glimpses of
affection were
less rare
but maybe
they wouldn’t be so
noticed
cherished
guarded
shepherded
into my secreted soul I
forget
on purpose
that which I cannot
swallow
learned to
eliminate
the day-
to-day
deflect
small building
damages
yellowing
psychic
bruises
or absorb
dead
(ening) shrivel
(ing)
cells of self
I wanted
to share
but now
can
not.

I, myself an obstruct face
even a tiny creature can fly
can't mocked never but how long
her face will be absent
seasons then cry when winter flowers
lost their breathing space
anchor my ship again to my mother’s hope
thou love flows to ocean
mountains are weathered
not there was any tree but lonely one
colors are changing over
except the soul murmuring the old
see the new one glee
glisten as a rolling stone under sea and lost
and come back again
to home inside a blue green algae can born -

@Musfiq us shaleheen

His dead wife used to spit. He tells me this on a hot July day on his porch. “Yeah, a whole fifteen feet,” he boasts. He’ll laugh, but I am noticing his large golden cat with her eyes half closed, dreaming in the summer heat behind the open screened windows of his old house.

He collects newspapers, and they lay in yellowed stacks that I can see beyond his open door within the stillness, still ******* with thick cord. Some of them rustle lightly at the corners, swaying up and down as his electric fan rotates this way and that. I momentarily question how fragile they’ve become with age against the hum of blown summer air, but his slow almost-southern-drawl takes me back in and I shield my eyes from the sun with my arm, keys in my left hand, sweat at the back of my neck.

The roof and trees have offered limited shade, and I’ve leaned against the side of the concrete steps to feel the coolness of the bricks against my knee. I’ve meant to go for an hour now, but he keeps me here with a, “Hey, y’know—” and another story will follow.

About his son sometimes, who he always says is also his best friend. I’ve never met him. He’s like a ghost of someone I think I could know but he remains unnamed and I have never questioned it. He’ll continue on —how he wants a new dog but he doesn’t know how his tired self would keep up with a little pup, and his fat old cat —oh, could I feed her this Friday and Saturday? “I might go out and see my son.”

I say that I will with a small pang of jealousy. She curls around my legs in her eagerness, unaware of her master’s weekend absences, purring at her first few bites of small, orange fish-shaped kibble.

When he is tired and doesn’t feel like driving he’ll take the city bus out for his errands and call me with his “cell-you-lar” to see if I can pick him up. “If it’s no trouble,” he says. It isn’t. I’ve taken him home on several other occasions.

His thank yous are quiet, but I feel them anyway. He is nothing like my father but some part of me hopes that when he looks at me he is seeing his son just as much as I am seeing all the years of neglect and false hope all wrapped up in this lonely man.

They told me the only thing that could cure heartache was war, and since the war wouldn't take me I figure the only thing to do now is take up a life of crime. Gabriel Garcia Marquez says in Love in the Time of Cholera that the only cure for heartache is to find other hearts to break. Five years have passed and I still remember without fail the flint of a lighter, the squint of an eye, and the bell of your dress. I dream a dream each night, sweet variation of the story of you. It comes down to a letter sometimes, I go to the window well with a notebook and a pencil and I draft a sonnet, sometimes a verse, any form of an expression to idle the time it takes for me to find you. I know stars that haven't lived as long. The way I cupped my hands over your ears, the way rapture lived and loved, you kissing me in the shade of the palm trees up their on Notre Damen Ave. I know the curve of the Earth wrapped in the shades of the skin on your body. I live every day for the chance that I will meet you again.

Not an amulet, an off white vertebrae; bone.
Brass wire, a loop at one end.
It bends as to make sure this will fit.

A gauge that measures mesmerization,
And we both must get along, but
Not because we're not tough enough:
Most of us aren't soft right yet.

So many stiffs, folly after folly.
The whole carful of loose cadavers,
Dangling, their feet hang with wet snow
And carnage,

Not even musk deer pop up,
They've all gone. Roosting in a parabol,
With X's sprayed to their groins.
Burning pop couples

Doing it like laboratory mice. Capybaras
Hiss, my own burnt blood is also
Flocculating.

Turn the cup upside down and
See the fire's balmy lachrymal opaque
Moss while it does not drip.

This is the story of man you asked me about;
Devoid of a muzzle, fur onto his chest; coarse
Hair in a garland.

It is the God of a tool that buzzes into the night.
A plateau for this most sensible study.
We feel another coming.

And when you awoke, your larval tongue
My eye mush, a song of verse and melancholy.
This half list of greatness, a tally we both wish to see.

we started a painting
when we met.
i was the artist,
and you weren't,
but i was okay with that.
you painted carelessly,
and i cleared up all your mistakes.
it was a beautiful portrait,
and i was beyond ecstasy.
but one day,
i guess you became tired.
holding brushes
and painting in blotches and strokes,
you decided to stop,
you quit and left me there.
i watched you walk out of the painting,
i watched you walk out of my life.
so then, very slowly
i grew more tired on my own.
from colors, to monochromatic.
from rainbow to black and white.
our painting turned dull.
one day, i ended it all,
never touching a single brush.
i never finished the painting.
how would i,
when inspiration is gone?
and only you,
were my inspiration.